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Bird-Lore 



this poor man, James A. Reed, must have 

 inhabiting the body which has been granted 

 the breath of life for a time by the same 

 God who created the Egrets, and who 

 doubtless gives as much heed to the cries 

 of the dying young birds as He does to 

 the heartless utterances of the ignorant 

 Senator! 



Senator McLean and others interested 

 in the bird-protective measure had little 

 to fear from a man of the caliber of Reed. 

 Our greatest opponent has been Senator 

 Hoke Smith of Georgia, who is astute, 

 plausible, forceful and altogether an 

 influential figure in the Democratic coun- 

 cils in Washington. Senator Smith has 

 fought the feather proviso with all his 

 might ever since the Tariff Bill came over 

 from the House, and he admitted in the 

 Senate that he personally framed the 

 wording of the change made by the Senate 

 Finance Committee. At the same time, 

 he has not been at all modest in claiming 

 great credit for the passage of the State 

 Game Laws of Georgia, which he declares 

 shows that he is a true believer in bird 

 protection. 



In the printed records of the Senate, it is 

 written that, seeking to justify his 

 threatened attack on the measure, he had 

 the following statement inserted therein: 

 "In doing so I wish to say that I shall do 

 so from the standpoint of one as much 

 interested as anyone else in birds and their 

 protection, and with a record, perhaps, of 

 almost as much accomplished in that line, 

 so far as my own state is concerned, as 

 anyone has accomplished in his state." 



To explain this subject a little more 

 fully, it may be enlightening to state that 

 this same Georgia law, for which Mr. 

 Smith takes such cre'dit to himself, con- 

 tains a little clause expressly permitting 

 the importation of birds' feathers into 

 Georgia for millinery purposes. This is 

 the only state in the Union which has 

 such a provision in its statutes, and the 

 facts here given seem to indicate that 

 Smith has long been an active champion 

 of the feather trade. 



When the Georgia law was being con- 

 sidered by the Legislature of that state, 



the National Association of Audubon 

 Societies opposed this feature with all its 

 might, and expended hundreds of dollars 

 in a perfectly fruitless effort to have this 

 feather clause striken out of the bill. 

 Some mysterious power thwarted all our 

 efforts. So far as we have ever been 

 able to discover, there is nothing on 

 record to show that Hoke Smith has 

 ever done one thing to discommode in 

 any way the people who make money 

 by the sale of the feathers of slaugh- 

 tered birds, and his home town, Atlanta, 

 is the largest millinery feather center in 

 the South today. 



But Senator Smith and his friends, the 

 milliners, have at length been brought to 

 a standstill by that terrible force which all 

 politicians fear — the roar of an angry and 

 outraged public sentiment. Never before, 

 of recent years at least, has the United 

 States Senate been deluged with such a 

 flood of letters and telegrams from indig- 

 nant constituents on any subject as that 

 which poured into Washington this sum- 

 mer demanding favorable consideration 

 of the anti-feather importation proviso 

 in the Senate. 



The result was that Senator Simmons of 

 North Carolina, Chairman of the Finance 

 Committee, recalled from the Senate the 

 feather section "for further consideration." 

 He again referred it to his Sub-Committee 

 which had previously undone the House 

 proviso. This committee, consisting of 

 Smith of Georgia, Johnson of Maine and 

 Hughes of New Jersey, met on Sunday, 

 August 31, and voted to stand by their 

 former decision to allow the milliners to 

 continue in their nefarious work of impor- 

 ting birds' feathers. The Finance Com- 

 mittee so reported to the Democratic 

 Caucus, which met on the night of Sep- 

 tember 2. As to what happened then, let 

 us read what the Washington Post had to 

 say on the subject the next morning: 



"For five hours last night Democratic 

 senators fought out the question of 

 whether or not the plumage of wild birds 

 should be permitted to be imported into the 

 United States. The senate committee had 

 first agreed to a modification of the drastic 



